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Dual boot

microsoft.public.windows.vista.installation setup

OK, I'm having a hard time with this. I just can't seem to get my brain
wrapped around it. I hope someone can give me a simple answer.

I have 2 HD's. One has XP Pro, the other Vista Home Premium. I want to
dual boot. I got Acronis and installed it's OS Selector. It only seems
to recognize the OS on the first drive. I tried making another partition
on the XP drive (since that is the one I am not wanted to reformat at
the moment). I have enough space showing, 63GB but I could only get it
to make a small 7GB partition.. Obviously not helpful.

Must I have both OS on the same drive? Is there some not to complex way
to use 2 drives?
TY, Kate

You do not need an OS selector for two Windows products. I recommend removing
that since it complicates your environment. Get your machine so it boots to
XP without issue as drive C:. Create a second partition wherever you want and
do a fresh install of Vista, but when you install, install to another drive
letter. The drive letters should appear the same during the Vista install.
For instance use C: for XP and D: for Vista. Installing the second operating
system will prevent the first from booting. It will take over the system.
Edit the boot config file on the C: drive by hand so it says what you want.
Make a copy of that file before installing the second OS. Boot to the XP
recover CD, go to recovery console, and issue a FIXBOOT command for the C:
drive. You can then boot to XP again. You can also do trial and error with
the boot config file on the C: drive so a menu is presented allowing you to
choose which OS you want to boot.

"Kate" <kzlists@yahoo.nospam> wrote in message news:4824643a$0$7079$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
OK, I'm having a hard time with this. I just can't seem to get my brain
wrapped around it. I hope someone can give me a simple answer.

I have 2 HD's. One has XP Pro, the other Vista Home Premium. I want to
dual boot. I got Acronis and installed it's OS Selector. It only seems
to recognize the OS on the first drive. I tried making another partition
on the XP drive (since that is the one I am not wanted to reformat at
the moment). I have enough space showing, 63GB but I could only get it
to make a small 7GB partition.. Obviously not helpful.

Must I have both OS on the same drive? Is there some not to complex way
to use 2 drives?
TY, Kate

On Fri, 09 May 2008 10:48:26 -0400, Kate <kzlists@yahoo.nospam> wrote:
>OK, I'm having a hard time with this. I just can't seem to get my brain
>wrapped around it. I hope someone can give me a simple answer.
>
>I have 2 HD's. One has XP Pro, the other Vista Home Premium. I want to
>dual boot. I got Acronis and installed it's OS Selector. It only seems
>to recognize the OS on the first drive. I tried making another partition
>on the XP drive (since that is the one I am not wanted to reformat at
>the moment). I have enough space showing, 63GB but I could only get it
>to make a small 7GB partition.. Obviously not helpful.
>
>Must I have both OS on the same drive? Is there some not to complex way
>to use 2 drives?
>TY, Kate

Follow the steps described at
<http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windows.vista.general/browse_thread/thread/a434fb8e883bfe76/e44fccdac924c871?hl=en&lnk=st&q=#e44fccdac924c871>

"Kate" wrote:
> I have 2 HD's. One has XP Pro, the other Vista Home Premium.
> I want to dual boot. [.....]
>
> Must I have both OS on the same drive? Is there some not to
> complex way to use 2 drives?
> TY, Kate

The simplest way to dual-boot 2 hard drives with an OS already
independently installed on each is to use the BIOS to switch between
the 2 hard drives by "enabling" one or the other as the boot drive. In
some older BIOSes, in which you could set the hard drive boot priority,
the hard drive that you put at the head of the list would be the boot
drive. Just make sure that the partitions that have the BCD file (Vista)
and the boot.ini/ntldr files (XP) are marked "active" (use Disk
Management).

I believe the op already has installed Vista on the second drive, thus a fresh install may not be necessary.

If Vista was fresh installed to unallocated space on the second drive or an existing partition, Vista should create the boot menu
options for dual booting and place the necessary files on the primary o/s(XP) partition.

Since both o/s are present.... Carey's post on using VistaBoot Pro which will allow managing the existing boot entries and the
bootloader, choose the default boot o/s, etc...should suffice(similar to EasyBCD).

Another more flexible and fine program(not discounting Acronis mentioned earlier) is BootITNG(BING).

--
...winston
ms-mvp mail

"dgm" <dgm@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:4CE5F56E-21F9-4A36-B604-CB428B6D6910@microsoft.com...
> You do not need an OS selector for two Windows products. I recommend removing
> that since it complicates your environment. Get your machine so it boots to
> XP without issue as drive C:. Create a second partition wherever you want and
> do a fresh install of Vista, but when you install, install to another drive
> letter. The drive letters should appear the same during the Vista install.
> For instance use C: for XP and D: for Vista. Installing the second operating
> system will prevent the first from booting. It will take over the system.
> Edit the boot config file on the C: drive by hand so it says what you want.
> Make a copy of that file before installing the second OS. Boot to the XP
> recover CD, go to recovery console, and issue a FIXBOOT command for the C:
> drive. You can then boot to XP again. You can also do trial and error with
> the boot config file on the C: drive so a menu is presented allowing you to
> choose which OS you want to boot.